How to Keep Your Puppy Off Furniture

Learn how to keep your puppy off the furniture from dog trainer Robert Haussmann of Dogboy, Inc. in this dog training video from Howcast.

Transcript

So in some households we really want our dogs to be on the furniture. We want to snuggle with them on the couch. We want to sleep with them in the bed. And that's perfectly fine. In some houses, you know, people are just not interested in having the dog on the furniture, and that's okay, too. It has to be up to you, and the dog has to learn about the rules of the house. Either way, the dog should learn if he's allowed up on the furniture. The dog should learn to wait for an invite from family members. It's a human space, and he should learn to ask permission for it.

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If the dog is just not allowed on the furniture at all, you have to make sure that the couch of the chair is not the only comfortable place to lie for the dog, which means you're getting him a nice, cushy, and soft bed to lay on. You might have to experiment with a few different ones to find the one that he really, really likes, or she really, really likes. But then when you're not there to influence the behavior, I would put some folding chairs on the couch, or put something else that blocks the dog from being able to get onto the couch. You can even flip the cushions on the couch up so that there's no place for the dog to comfortably land.

But then make sure that if you're closing that window that you're opening one somewhere else, which means the comfortable bed on the floor for him. And they can actually be near the couch so the dog can be near you while you're sitting on the couch. A lot of times the dog just wants to jump up to be near you. And be careful not to give the dog too much negative attention for it, because attention is still attention. So if you're telling him "no, off, sit, stay, down, off, off, off," a lot of times the dog is realizing that jumping on the couch seems to get a real rise out of you, and he can get a lot of attention from you that way.

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It should be something where you're able to redirect him to go to his own bed, and that jumping on the couch never really works. That means you have to be really consistent about if you're not letting him on the furniture, then nobody in the house is letting him on the furniture. And it's not, okay, sometimes when you're in the mood for it. If you're going to do something like that, again, it goes into that whole ask permission portion. But if you've decided that the rules of your house is dogs are off the furniture, it has to be consistent and clear to the dog. That's how I would teach you to keep dogs off the furniture.